dolf_lundgren wrote:Frenchy wrote:“Edinburgh offices are at the north end of the ground, the boys change in the west stand and we use the back pitches,” said Cockerill. “The lazy b------- would drive their cars from the north end round to be nearer the pitches rather than walk bloody 150 yards...
I don't understand why anyone would do this, let alone a professional athlete on their way to training.
Different scenario but if you read the autobiography of Chris Hoy, he talks about basically doing as little as possible when not in the velodrome, along the lines of , never walk if you can cycle, never cycle if you can drive.
Not really relevant but it is a mindset of some athletes. The question it raises for me is why they meet in the office? Must have a team room in there?
The timekeeping and general discipline issues are a good sign. Senior players have a responsibility to set those too. It shouldn't need a coach to tell them all the time.
The other side of the Chris Hoy coin is the film I remember seeing of him training on a static bike where he falls off the thing at the end of the session and throws his guts up, which was par for the course apparently.
Also, I read in the Wilkinson autobiography that when at Newcastle and didn't drive he'd take the opportunity to walk for miles home from the supermarket carrying the weekly shop in bags as extra training.
Whether the tale of the Edinburgh players is apocryphal or not, it does seem that there was a sense of entitlement and comfort, a laziness, even a deluded sense of how good they were.
We are beginning to see a difference in the attitude, they might even get somewhere under Cockers' leadership if they are prepared to do what it takes.
I always remember Daley Thompson saying he trained twice on Christmas Day, he knew his rivals would train once, but none of them would do that extra one.